Windows 7 "consider replacing your battery"

There seems to be a known problem running Windows 7 on a Laptop. I have been running Windows 7 for about a year now starting with the Beta, then the RC and now the RTM on my Inspiron 1720. I never had any problems until December of 2009 when my 6 cell battery died. I did not give any thought to the fact that I had dome a clean install about 3 weeks prior to Windows 7 Pro x64 RTM. Well I purchased a new 9 cell battery at the end of December and now it is going south. I get the "consider replacing your battery" messege shortly after switching from the AC power. It will run for about 30 minutes and then just shutdown abruptly. I plug it in and the messege pops up stating that my battery is charging correctly but that it is near the end of its life and should be replaced.

Microsoft has acknowleged that there is a problem and they feel that it has to do with the bios of all of the computers having this problem. I do not understand how it could be a problem with the bios needing an update when this was fine in previous versions of Windows 7 and also no problem under Vista x86 or x64.

I would like to know who else has had problems with their batteries going bad after installing Windows 7. I myself could not afford to buy the new battery at the time but needed to be able to use my laptop for its intended use. Now I may be looking at needing to buy another one soon. At what Dell charges for batteries we will go bankrupt.

If you have had this issue please post here and also at the link above.

It appears to be a Windows 7 problem, at least IMO, since it's happening to quite a few computer manufacturers. I know that we have a team that was meeting with Microsoft late last week to discuss the issue and determine best resolution. Not sure if that will end up being a new BIOS revision based off information they provide or if it will be a Windows patch.

I also think it is on Microsoft and hope that they can fix it via a software patch. If it comes down to needing a bios update I may be in trouble since it has been so long since there have been any updates for the 1720 laptop. Please if/when you hear something let us know.

"...PC batteries inherently degrade in their ability to hold a charge and provide power, and ultimately batteries must be replaced to restore an acceptable battery life (batteries usually have a warranty of 12 months). Windows 7 taps into a feature of modern laptop batteries which have circuitry and firmware that can report the overall health of the battery in Watt-hours power capacity. Windows 7 then calculates the percentage of degradation from the original design capacity; the threshold is set at 60 percent degradation, so if the battery is performing at 40 percent of its designed capacity then users will see Windows 7 report that it might be time to change the battery...Windows 7's new "Consider replacing your battery" message does not exist in Windows XP and Windows Vista, so many users would probably not have been aware of their batteries degrading. This would also explain why some users were seeing the battery indicator in Windows 7 builds prior to the RTM release while others only saw it in the RTM... "

I have seen that before. It still does not explain all of the people having batteries that are a few weeks old seeing this problem. In the 3 months that I have been running the RTM I have gone thru 2 batteries. I can accept the first battery could have just met its life expectancy but not the new 9 cell in just over a month. THis is a wide spread problem that is hitting all brands of laptops and some of them are just weeks old, even a few months old is just uncalled for.

What options would you be talking about? I have tried some of the things posted in the Technet thread. I have made changes to the power settings. I mostly use the laptop with the AC adapter but it should not shut off when running on battery and then when I plug it into power and turn it on and check to see it showing 82% charged, there is no way in the short time it takes to boot the it went from dead to 82% full.

Like I said before, I have chalked the first battery dieing to age. But I have a hard time swallowing that a battery that is less than 2 months old has already gone bad. It is possible and maybe I will look into getting it replaced under warranty and hope that I do not see this happen again.

I faced the battery problem today . My laptop is one year old and using windows 7 for 4 months now. After upgrading my windows 7 last night , received message of " consider replacing my batter" . There are many blogs on the internet, do you guys believe this is a windows error or a battery issue. I ran out of warranty last week from dell and replacing battery is definately going to cost me a lot.

i have also a 3 year old dell 15 r inspiron 5520 laptop. till now it was working fine but today suddenly on the battery icon it has started to show the red color cross sign with a message '"fully charged 100% consider replacing your battery". now i am in confusion. has my battery become degraded?? should i buy a new battery???